MUMBAI: There have been endless controversies on social media, speculations on news media around Aadhaar’s relevance and constitutional validity. Now, the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) wants to monitor media coverage of Aadhaar as well as social media conversations, according to media reports. Based on the information, it will run campaigns to “neutralise” the “negative sentiments” on social media.

UIDAI posted a bid on 18 July seeking to hire a social media agency that will employ “online reputation management” and “social listening” tools. Then another bid posted on 19 July was to hire a media monitoring agency to monitor Aadhaar-related post across print, electronic and digital media.

The media monitoring agency shall conduct a comprehensive media search on daily basis and present an update report within prescribed time limits on appropriate news reports and content with regards to UIDAI, Aadhaar and other related issues as per the requirements of UIDAI, as per the proposal.

On the other hand the social media agency has to segregate Aadhaar-related conversations into “problematic and non-problematic” categories and highlight the “incidences” that may have a “negative impact on the Aadhaar brand”.

The agency will also provide weekly “online reputation management reports” to UIDAI, which will have details of “top detractors, top influencers and the net sentiment related to Aadhaar”.

"This monitoring activity shall extend to social media platforms, websites (news and others), blogs/ forums, etc. so that issues related to Aadhaar can be understood,” the tender document states.

“The tools shall be capable of doing a sentiment analysis of all such conversations and flag any discrepancy in sentiments’ trend. Additionally, the service provider will draft a plan to work out and neutralise negative sentiments,” it adds.

However, the Supreme Court’s final verdict on the constitutional validity of Aadhaar is yet to come.